Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Um, Yeah

It has occurred to me that I ought to, yanno, blog.  Clearly I'm still not fully in the swing of things.

I do want you to know what's coming up, and also to reassure you that things WILL be normal again.  Soon.

(No, I am not going to define "normal.")


  • Our July Secret Agent Contest will run the week of July 11th.  Normally I post the submission guidelines the Monday before submissions open.  However, that falls on the Fourth, so I'll be posting them on Tuesday instead.  Just FYI.
  • We'll have some in-house crits soon, too.  I'd love to have your votes for what you'd like to do next, so please leave your ideas in the comment box.  There are several things we haven't done in a while, and I'd like to please the majority if I can.
  • We are definitely doing another Baker's Dozen Agent Auction this December.  (Squee!)  Seems the agents had as much fun as we did (Josh informed me that the banter and trash talk extended through emails--gotta love that!), so I'm thinking we might have a bigger turn-out this year.  I'll be tweaking the rules, too, as some entries closed quickly because of immediate full requests.  So, yeah.  I'll be working on this in the coming months, and will keep you apprised.

Okay, hit me with your crit suggestions!  Goodness knows I need a nudge or two to get things rolling around here.

12 comments:

  1. First 250 words crit session, please!

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  2. Random question... I've been reading this great community for a while, but have never entered a contest. I've seen the genre rules in most secret agent contests, but I can't remember whether only novels are accepted or also shorter works, like novellas and novelletes.

    Does anyone know?

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  3. First page crits. Those are really useful :)

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  4. Are the secret agent contests a request for a full manuscript, and are they genre-specific?

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  5. Here are the details on SA contests:

    http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/p/secret-agent.html

    They are for full-length novels only.

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  6. First page crits are always useful. I'd also like to see query crits as well. Maybe even query and first page crits rolled up into one contest. Heck, first 50 words, first sentence, and drop the needle -- all of them are so beneficial to aspirants!

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  7. Yay for 'normal stuff'! ^_^ After your thoughts return to Earth, that is ;-)

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  8. Maybe we could do some crits on longer pieces too - the first 1000 words? Or maybe even first 1250, since the first five pages seems to be a fairly standard inclusion with a lot of queries.

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  9. I'd kill for a first page crit right about now. Okay, maybe not kill, but at least maim.

    Glad you're back!

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  10. Just thought I'd throw in a "You Rock!" comment, in case you've forgotten that you do. I love the contests and the tidbits on agents. The critiques are priceless. Even though I've got two fulls out right now, I'm thrilled to know more contests -- specifically the Baker's Dozen contest -- will be taking place (in case my fulls come back as the dreaded R's). Keep on rockin'! :D

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  11. Could we do a log line critique to help us get ready for Baker's Dozen?

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  12. Lisa, we will definitely do log line crits as we get closer to the Baker's Dozen -- I think that was really helpful last year! :)

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